Extension ladders have been commonly used for many years to reach greater heights such as the roof of a house. Common extension ladders generally are only divided into two or three extendable pieces. To have an extension ladder with a sizeable extended length, the ladder must be fairly bulky and long even when the ladder is in a collapsed position. Thus, one disadvantage of the common extension ladder is that they are difficult to transport from one project to another and require a greater amount of space in storage and/or during transport than is desirable.
Another major disadvantage with a ladder is that the climbing motion of the user is unsafe. There are thousands of injuries and many deaths each year that result from people falling off ladders. Many of these injuries and deaths could be avoided if the person was using a staircase instead of a ladder due to the more ergonomic climbing motion involved in using a staircase. One of the major reasons why staircases are safer than ladders includes the fact that stairs generally provide a smaller rise over run than ladders. This helps to prevent a user from falling backwards, which is how most injuries occur.
Staircases, however, suffer the disadvantage that they generally require significant space and permanent installation at a desired location. Thus, staircases are not able to be transported to various locations quickly like an extension ladder. For example, a typical homeowner would usually choose the common household ladder to do various tasks around the house, such as cleaning leaves from the gutters, because he would not take the time to install a staircase each time he needed a ladder to gain access to a location at his home. Examples of other applications where a ladder is often used instead of a staircase due to the ladder's portable nature are at construction sites, fire escapes, and unloading cargo and de-boarding from trucks and other large vehicles.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a collapsible staircase that is operable to be collapsed into a compact position for easy storage and transportation. Also, there is a need for increasing the safety of a portable extension ladder by providing a staircase that is able to be collapsed into a compact position and easily installed at a desired location.